The aim of mental training is clearness and accuracy of view, together with the strength to keep steadfastly looking into the world of intelligible things. What rouses desire tends to enslave; what gives delight tends to liberate; the one appeals to the senses, the other to the soul. Hence, intellectual and moral pleasures alone are associated with the sense of freedom and pure joy. The lovers of freedom are as rare as the lovers of truth and of God. For most, liberty is but a trader's commodity, to be parted with for price, as their obedience is a slave's service. The chief good consists in acting justly and nobly, rather than in thinking acutely and profoundly. The free play of the mind is delightful, but the law of moral obligation is the deepest thing in us. Honor, place, and wealth, which are won at the price of self-improvement, the wise will not desire. Great opportunities seldom present themselves, but every moment of every hour of thy conscious life is an opportunity to improve thyself, which for thee is the best and most necessary thing. Since our power over others is small, but over ourselves large, let us devote our energies to self-improvement. "Nor let any man say," writes Locke, "he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out and carrying him into action; for what he can do before a prince or great man he can do alone or in the presence of God, if he will."
The sure way to happiness is to yield ourselves wholly to God, knowing that he has care of us, and at the same time to seek to draw from life whatever joy and delight it may bestow upon a high mind and a pure heart, receiving the blessing gladly, conscious all the while that what is external cannot really be ours, and is not, therefore, necessary to our contentment.
That many are wiser and stronger than thou, is not a motive for discouragement; the depressing thought is, that so few are wise and strong. He who gives his whole life to what he believes he is most capable of doing, succeeds, whatever be the worth of his work. There are many who are busy with many things; but one who has a high purpose, and who devotes all his energies to its fulfillment, is not easily found; and great and interesting characters are, therefore, rare.
To what better use can we put life than to employ it in ameliorating life? It is to this every wise and good man devotes himself, whether he be priest or teacher, physician or lawyer, philosopher or poet, captain of industry or statesman.
CHAPTER V.
THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION.
Our system of Public-School Education is a result of the faith of the people in the need of universal intelligence for the maintenance of popular government. Does this system include moral training? Since the teaching of religious doctrines is precluded, this, I imagine, is what we are to consider in discussing the Scope of Public-School Education. The equivalents of scope are aim, end, opportunity, range of view; and the equivalents of education are training, discipline, development, instruction. The proper meaning of the word education, it seems, is not a drawing out, but a training up, as vines are trained to lay hold of and rise by means of what is stronger than themselves. My subject, then, is the aim, end, opportunity, and range of view of public-school education, which to be education at all, in any true sense, must be a training, discipline, development, and instruction of man's whole being, physical, intellectual, and moral. This, I suppose, is what Herbert Spencer means when he defines education to be a preparation for complete living. Montaigne says the end of education is wisdom and virtue; Comenius declares it to be knowledge, virtue, and religion; Milton, likeness to God through virtue and faith; Locke, health of body, virtue, and good manners; Herbart, virtue, which is the realization in each one of the idea of inner freedom; while Kant and Fichte declare it to consist chiefly in the formation of character. All these thinkers agree that the supreme end of education is spiritual or ethical. The controlling aim, then, should be, not to impart information, but to upbuild the being which makes us human, to form habits of right thinking and doing. The ideal is virtually that of Israel,—that righteousness is life,—though the Greek ideal of beauty and freedom may not be excluded. It is the doctrine that manners make the man, that conduct is three-fourths of life, leaving but one-fourth for intellectual activity and æsthetic enjoyment; and into this fourth of life but few ever enter in any real way, while all are called and may learn to do good and avoid evil.
"In the end," says Ruskin, "the God of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones." We can all learn to become active, modest, and kind; to turn from idleness, pride, greed, and cruelty. But we cannot all make ourselves capable of living in the high regions of pure thought and ideal beauty; and for the few even who are able to do this, it is still true that conduct is three-fourths of life.
"The end of man," says Büchner, "is conversion into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia." This also is an ideal, and he thinks we should be pleased to know that in dying we give back to the universe what had been lent. He moralizes too; but if all we can know of our destiny is that we shall be converted into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, the sermon may be omitted. On such a faith it is not possible to found a satisfactory system of education. Men will always refuse to think thus meanly of themselves, and in answer to those who would persuade them that they are but brutes, they will, with perfect confidence, claim kinship with God; for from an utterly frivolous view of life both our reason and our instinct turn.